Yoga Flow: Practicing Intimacy With the Self
When we are younger, we think about building intimacy with others — how we want to love others and how we want others to love us. We often fail to think about how to love ourselves. This leads us not only to miss out on an intimate relationship with the self, but to feel shame around building one.
How many romance movies exist about two people falling in love with each other?
How many romance movies exist about someone falling in love with themselves?
The answer to these questions demonstrates how little example we have for what a loving relationship with the self looks like.
Not only are we missing these examples in our media, but we also rarely learn what a relationship with the self actually is — or how to develop and practice intimacy within our bodies and minds.
Growing up, I have sat around tables with women who shared their lack of enjoyment and intimacy within their bodies. While many of these conversations focused on sex, I found that many women also lacked emotional intimacy with themselves.
Yoga is a movement practice that isn’t about achieving status or performance among others. Instead, it allows us to build physical, emotional, and even spiritual intimacy with ourselves.
Yoga invites us to explore sensation — to learn how our bodies like to move and what they like to feel. It helps us understand how our emotions are connected to our bodies and how our bodies respond to our thoughts.
Yoga teaches us to know ourselves in an intimate way that most performance-based movement practices do not.
We deserve to know what it feels like to feel good.
We deserve to know what it feels like to love ourselves — truly.
To take care of ourselves.
To be intimate with our bodies.
To get to know our minds.
Practicing this kind of intimacy is what allows us to understand and embody true spirituality.
I like to use the following sequence of postures to reconnect with my body and practice intimacy with myself in the same way I would with a romantic partner or someone I love.
The Sequence
Easy Seat with Hands on Heart
Sit your hips on a blanket, bolster, pillow, or towel. Cross your legs in front of you and place both hands over your heart. Feel your heartbeat. Feel your breath rise and fall in your chest. Think of at least one thing you love about yourself — or list as many as possible.
Easy Seat with Hands Behind the Neck
I like to run my fingers through my hair as I get here. Once your hands are behind your neck, stretch your elbows wide to open your chest or curl them forward to stretch your upper back. Either way — massage yourself. That is the whole point of this posture: to tend to your neck.
Easy Seat, Hug Yourself
Wrap your arms around yourself and hug yourself tightly, like you’re hugging someone you love whom you haven’t seen in a long time. You might realize you haven’t hugged yourself in a long time — or ever.
Tabletop with Hip Circles
Move into tabletop and begin circling your hips. Really feel your body here. Our hips store a lot of emotion. They are an entryway to our life force and our creativity. Be open to what you feel. When I let myself feel my hips, my creativity explodes.
Downward-Facing Dog
Standing Forward Fold
Slow Rise to Mountain
As you stand, run your hands up your calves, thighs, stomach, chest, and through your hair. Feel your body.
Hands in Prayer at Heart
Return to your list of things you love about yourself. Challenge yourself to add as many more as you can.
Forward Fold
Quick Plank
Tabletop
Hip Circles
Easy Seat with Hands on Heart
Breath
Decide where you want to bring this practice next.
After a practice like this, I like to take a hot bath.
For some, this practice may feel hokey or uncomfortable at first. Intimacy and vulnerability can be hard. Sometimes, it can be even harder to be intimate with ourselves than it is to be intimate with others.
But seriously — just try it.
What is the worst that could happen?
What is the best?
More soon,
AJ
